Craig Campbell's last album, Never Regret, was released more than three years ago, on the now-closed Bigger Picture Music Group. When the singer-songwriter signed with Red Bow Records, a division of Broken Bow, in 2015, he was eager to get new music in the hands of his fans -- and as 2016 wraps up, Campbell is still just as eager, and promises that the wait will be worth it in the end.

"It’s a never-ending struggle," Campbell admits to The Boot. "With my new record label, with Red Bow, it’s very different from where I was prior to that: They don’t want to release an album until we have a hit song, and I feel like "Outskirts [of Heaven]" has as good a chance of being that hit song as any song out there, so hopefully when all is said and done, we can be talking about a new album sometime next year."

Campbell chose "Outskirts of Heaven," which he co-wrote, as a single in part because he sees how much his fans enjoy it when he performs it live.

"We were getting so much great feedback from people who hear it at the live shows," Campbell explains. "I fought, but I didn’t have to fight hard for it. I had so much evidence showing that it was a hit song, so it was hard to deny that. It’s fun to see the song doing as well as it’s doing. There’s no doubt we made the best choice."

Although Campbell doesn't feel the need to write all of the songs for his next project, he says that each song has to resonate with him personally in order for him to record it.

"It’s got to be a 'Craig Campbell song.' It's got to be a story I can tell," he notes. "I could sit here and tell you a story, and you’ve got to believe that I’ve lived it or I know somebody that lived it."

When asked how his new record will compare to Never Regret, Campbell says that he hopes each of his albums shows his growth as an artist and a writer.

"I feel like I’m a better songwriter than I was when I first moved to town," the Georgia native confesses. "2013 was my last record, so I’ve had all this time and been writing all these songs, so it’s been hard to whittle it down to 12. But I feel like, at the end of the day, we will have picked 12 ridiculously good songs."

"Outskirts of Heaven" is available for download on iTunes.

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